Julius Baer Defends Wikileaks Shut Down; Digs A Deeper Hole

from the backed-into-a-corner... dept

The "Wikileaks" shutdown situation continues. The Associated Press covered the story late yesterday, noting how Julius Baer's lawyers were apparently unfamiliar with the concept of the Streisand Effect, and how the attempt to get Wikileaks taken offline would only get it -- and the content the company was trying to hide -- a lot more attention. Today, Julius Baer has finally made a statement on the matter, claiming a variety of contradictory things. It says that it didn't want the entire site taken offline, but hasn't asked the court to reverse its order shutting down the site. As Slashdot points out, the bank also seems to be claiming that the controversial documents in question need to be taken offline both because they're forged and also because they reveal confidential info. While it is possible that a forged document would also have some legitimate confidential info, it does seem like a strange defense to bring up both of these things. At the very least, it certainly seems like the bank keeps digging itself a deeper and deeper hole. If it really was afraid that having this content out there would make things worse in its ongoing legal battles, things seem a lot worse now as many more people are aware of the documents.

Curious?

Also undermining the injunction is that the site is available on mirror sites hosted outside the US. Not only are the documents accessible, taking down the site has only made folks curious as to what could cause such a decision (at least it made me curious). Dare I call it the Rubbernecking effect?